The video card in our secondary computer has started to act up. Lots of artifacts, windows dropping to lower resolution, general mess. It's still "working" in that I get a windows login screen, but it's very clearly unhappy and most likely to get unhappier soon.

I am cash poor right now and since I wasn't expecting to buy a new video card, I have no idea what cards are good/bad/mediocre.

I will be replacing a Nvidia GTX 580. I would like something at least as good, but at a much lower price point.

I'll do my homework and due diligence and start reading up on mid to low range video cards, but in the meantime I thought I'd throw out this question to see if anyone has an opinion.

I've used a 1050, it IS really good for a low budget gaming card. It should be a nice improvement over the 580, and make newer games which wouldn't really be playable on the 580 into games you can run now.

edit: The GT 1030 costs less but is a sizable step down from the 1050. Not only that, but there are DDR4 versions floating around out there and you want to avoid those at all costs.

The amount of gaming that isn't retro simulator based is actually quite small on that computer, but it does exist.

Mostly, this is my autistic's son's go to computer, and he's getting kind of stressed that it is not available, which is unfortunately. I'm under orders to fix it asap, which both amused me and annoyed me.

Anything with a standard PCI-e slot should be good enough, I guess? I'm not sure how old the motherboard is or even what it is without opening it up at this point.

It can't be that old if it works with the GTX 580. I guess my question is do I need to worry about any incompatibilities or other issues? I don't do video cards for a living and only pay attention when I need a new one, but time is short on this particular case.

New videocards, from Nvidia and AMD, are made to use the newer style UEFI motherboard bios. If that computer's motherboard is old enough, it probably uses the older 'legacy' style bios. I have seen new cards work with the older bios, I have seen people have problems with the older bios.

You can avoid this potential problem by getting a used card, one that pre-dates this UEFI thing. For Nvidia that means GTX 7xx or older, for AMD anything prior to the RX series should be fully compatible. I'm not saying a new card won't work, just that there's an outside chance you'll have issues with it. If you were buying used I'd look for something like a GTX 770. I think if you can power a 580 then you can power just about anything else you might want to buy.

Examined the inside of the computer. I believe a mouse had been living on the back of the video card, pooping and peeing to his heart's content. Not sure how long he had been there but I would have expected the video card to fail nearly right away, so he probably just moved in.

I have a large fan that fits over the front of the harddrive enclosure (after you've removed all the case's panel coverings) that is only held in place by magnets. It also never quite fit the case very well, so it was always a delicate balance of wedging it in versus making full contact with the leads. My autistic son's feet are always on the move, which means the fan gets kicked off the front of the case about 30 seconds after he sits down at the computer. Eventually I just gave up replacing the fan over and over again, leaving a large opening in the front of the case. i.e. mouse front door. Probably.

Cleaned out the case as it wasn't really that bad yet and set up some mouse traps. I'm not 100% sure it was a mouse since the case was also filled to the brim with dust bunnies the size of things that are large when compared to normal dust bunnies, so it was pretty messy in general.

And...I forgot to check the motherboard while I was in there.

The current video card is a GTX 580. That has got to mean that the motherboard is modern enough for the current crop of budget nvidia cards, right? I mean, right? UEFI has been around forever at this point.

We'll see. Ordering tonight.

Last edited by GreenGoo on Sun Sep 16, 2018 10:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah, that's workable, probably. There is a cd rack (remember those?!) on the desk behind the monitor. I'll probably have to find that a new home. I'm hoping to murder the cute little guy tonight, old school style with a spring trap. Gruesome, but I just happened to have some still in their package on my desk for completely unrelated reasons, I swear!

Just need to get the trap in the morning before the wife or kids find it first.

On the plus side I now have two monitors on the main computer again for the first time in a couple of years I think. They're both 16:9 27" and 24" so they don't really fit in the area I've put them in, but it'll work until I get the second computer fixed.

It's weird having a 2nd monitor again. They are kind of big and awkward so I haven't adjusted to them yet. Feels like I need to move my head to far to see everything, but I can't move them back because of lack of space.

Good lord. I'm looking at prices on the GTX 1050 on Amazon.ca and there are some really outlandish prices. Like 2x the base price on these things. I'm not sure how much they think all their added doodads are worth, but if I'm going to spend that much on a card, I'm just gonna buy a better card. Some of these prices are insane.

Prices for the 2 GB version should be around CAN$180-$199ish based on conversion rate alone. I'm seeing CAN$330+ for some of these.

Well it's for a secondary gaming machine that is mostly used for youtube, old Sonic the Hedgehog emulation and very rarely something a little more modern, but never anything overly taxing. Well, sometimes Team Fortress 2 (which is 11 years old), I think.

If I'm not mistaken, the GTX 580 that the new card will be replacing had 1.5 GB GDDR5 memory. I haven't tried to game on it myself in several years, so I have no idea how it holds up on something modern like For Honor, Rainbow Six: Siege or PUBG. On the plus side the chances it needs to ever run something like that is quite small.

Chances are it already has some bus or cpu choke points to its performance anyway. I really haven't even looked at the thing in a couple of years. I can't even tell you what cpu or how much memory is in the thing without opening it up again.

I'm not adamant about 2 GB, but the price point is much better, I'm on an even tighter budget than usual and the need for more memory based on current usage seems low.

I bought my 1050Ti from TigerDirect for $291, so that sounds about right. Even that though might be a little overkill for what you want. Seems to be the zone in which they're priced now. A lot of them from looking around when I was scouting out mine are out of stock.

First, these cards are very efficient in performance, you will not generate any heat worth talking about. Your 580, now THAT was like having a small sun inside your computer.

I don't think 2gb vram is an issue in a card like this. For one thing, it's still more than what the 580 had. For another, this is not a main computer. A 1050 will run games fine even if you need to lower some settings.

I don't think the jump to 1050 Ti is worth it, not at current prices. If you need something more than a 1050 then a 1060 3gb or RX 570 should be the next step. I think the 1050 Ti's main claim to fame is it is the most powerful videocard you can get that does not require a 6 pin pci-ex connector. That's why someone would buy it over a regular 1050, that's the best card you can get if you have system with a weak power supply and you don't want to have to buy a new power supply.

I bought my 1050Ti from TigerDirect for $291, so that sounds about right. Even that though might be a little overkill for what you want. Seems to be the zone in which they're priced now. A lot of them from looking around when I was scouting out mine are out of stock.

I think that's a bit pricey for that card Rumpy, but in any case, keep in mind that the card up for consideration is the 1050, not the 1050 ti.

First, these cards are very efficient in performance, you will not generate any heat worth talking about. Your 580, now THAT was like having a small sun inside your computer.

I don't think 2gb vram is an issue in a card like this. For one thing, it's still more than what the 580 had. For another, this is not a main computer. A 1050 will run games fine even if you need to lower some settings.

I don't think the jump to 1050 Ti is worth it, not at current prices. If you need something more than a 1050 then a 1060 3gb or RX 570 should be the next step. I think the 1050 Ti's main claim to fame is it is the most powerful videocard you can get that does not require a 6 pin pci-ex connector. That's why someone would buy it over a regular 1050, that's the best card you can get if you have system with a weak power supply and you don't want to have to buy a new power supply.

Thanks gameoverman. You're saying all the right things to get me to pull the trigger.

1) Heat was a MAJOR problem in that system and I ended up replacing the OEM heatsink on the cpu with a water cooled solution. Last year (I think? Maybe 2 years ago? Probably last year) the thing was crashing during our insanely hot summer with no air conditioning in a room with another workhorse computer. The water cooling seemed to make enough of a difference that it never crashed due to heat again. I actually mentioned the possibility that the new card would run cooler to my wife before I had even looked into it. My wife doesn't do computers, I have no idea why I was discussing video card heat production with her. I'm glad to hear that I should expect much less heat!

2) As far as memory goes, I think it should be fine, too. Honestly it rarely even boots up any games from steam, and the ones it does are either 2d fighters/platformers, or TF2. Everything else is emulator or browser based. I would prefer more memory, but I'm not willing to pay for it.

3) As far as horse power goes, see the usage outlined in 2)

4) Power is not a problem in that machine as it used to be my main computer years ago and I replaced the power supply with something more robust before it was relegated to 2nd string. I suspect the power requirements are a downgrade after the 580 anyway, but I don't actually know that for a fact and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Ok, I was just waiting to hear opinions, and since someone posted one that supports everything I believe to be true, I can go ahead and pull the trigger while safely ignoring opinions that do not support my beliefs. That's how objective evaluation works, right?

I bought my 1050Ti from TigerDirect for $291, so that sounds about right. Even that though might be a little overkill for what you want. Seems to be the zone in which they're priced now. A lot of them from looking around when I was scouting out mine are out of stock.

I think that's a bit pricey for that card Rumpy, but in any case, keep in mind that the card up for consideration is the 1050, not the 1050 ti.

Yeah, probably so, although at the time it was hard to find something priced lower and that was only a few months ago, so maybe they've come down a little.

Oh yeah, speaking about fans, I'm very impressed with this card. They say it's whisper quiet and I had to double-check to see if the fans were turning. They're that quiet and I'm sure a lot more energy efficient in the process.

That motherboard has a UEFI bios, and it's a 970 chipset, so you can use anything you like in it. The Phenom II/FX CPUs used a lot of power, depending on which one you have, so it does not surprise me that CPU temps were a problem as well. That's especially true if you have a higher end FX 8 series in there. At least this new card will sip electricity and not add to the heat.

Never heard of them but they sure are into a lot of different products. Ink cartridges even.

No sign of a LESHP 1050 on newegg canada.

That price is about CAN$100. That's...uncomfortably cheap as compared to every other manufacturer of a card with that chip. Like, fraud or low quality cheap.

I have no idea whether the company is reliable (new companies start up all the time, so me being ignorant doesn't mean anything) or whether the card is comparable to others. I would have thought that most cards based on nvidia's base design would be similar, but the price suggests that something is up with this card.

GPUs were in high demand for crypto-currency, which pushed card prices up.

Not sure what the current market is like.

Yep, I know. I unfortunately needed a card at the tail end of that. I unfortunately don't think the market has eased up all that much given that Nvidia's new cards are much more expensive. Then again, they haven't yet announced their consumer-level cards.

Looking at the inside of the computer, I'm now worried that the video card will long outlive the computer, which is in pretty rough shape from the mouse living, even after being cleaned up. Chances are the wear and tear from having food particles and mouse bedding everywhere, not to mention probable urine and feces (I didn't actually identify any, I just assume) on the motherboard and other components has to be significant.

I'm still wrapping my head around 2 day free shipping in Canada. We've been programmed for so long that everything takes longer and is more expensive, that I'm left wondering how Amazon can afford to do this on such small items. Sure in this case it's over a hundred, but I've order 50 bucks worth of stuff before. Same deal. Even if the margins are huge, it seems impossible.

Like I said, programmed to believe things are a certain way for most of my life.